Saturdays = Youth

Saturdays = Youth was released on April 11, 2008 in Australia (EMI), April 14 in France (Virgin) and April 15 in the US. Wikipedia lists the label as Virgin while other sources say Mute, so the label is unresolved. It was recorded in 2007 at Rockfield Studios in Wales and produced by Ken Thomas, with Ewan Pearson and Anthony Gonzalez, who also played additional keyboards. The band was Gonzalez, Loic Maurin and Morgan Kibby. It is 62:12 long. The singles were "Couleurs" (February 25, 2008), "Graveyard Girl" (April 28), "Kim & Jessie" (July 21) and "We Own the Sky" (December 1).

It reached 173 in France and 107 on the Billboard 200 and topped the US Heatseekers chart, and sold about 76,000 US copies by October 2011. Metacritic scored it 70, and Pitchfork gave it 8.5 and ranked it eighth of 2008. The A.V. Club's Andy Battaglia heard a more expansive sense of space; The Guardian's Dorian Lynskey, in a mixed review, wrote that the songwriting evaporates in a haze of rote shoe-gazing. The record moved M83 from shoegaze and ambient work toward the synth-pop of Hurry Up, We're Dreaming (2011).